In an unusual move, YouTube announced today that it was
blocking access to a video showing clips from "The
Innocence of Muslims" - an anti-Islamic film that depicts
Prophet Mohammed as a philanderer who approves of child
abuse - after the film sparked violent protests in Egypt
and Libya.

"We work hard to create a community everyone can enjoy and
which also enables people to express different opinions.
This can be a challenge because what's OK in one country
can be offensive elsewhere," said Google-owned YouTube.
"This video - which is widely available on the web - is clearly
within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube. However,
given the very difficult situation in Libya and Egypt we
have temporarily restricted access in both countries."

It is rare for YouTube to restrict access to a video that,
by the company's own admission, falls within its Terms of
Service, without a valid court order. YouTube may be
subject to legal pressure in Egypt, where Google has
offices that may render the company subject to Egyptian
law, but it has no such offices in Libya. Furthermore,
there is no evidence of pressure from the Egyptian or the
Libyan government on YouTube, in their statement or
elsewhere.

Temporary censorship that is geographically-limited is
certainly an improvement over the reaction to the video in
Kabul, where the Afghani government has blocked YouTube
altogether in order to prevent Afghans from seeing the
video. "We have been told to shut down YouTube to the
Afghan public until the video is taken down," Aimal Marjan,
General Director of Information Technology at the Ministry
of Communications, told Reuters. But pointing out that it
could be worse is not a sufficient excuse for YouTube's
decision to limit freedom of expression on the Internet.

Pakistan has been blocking websites for hosting content it
deems offensive since 2007, when it blocked the entirety of
Google-owned web-publishing platform Blogger. In 2010,
Pakistan blocked Wikipedia, YouTube, and Facebook for
hosting content related to a contest called "Draw Mohammed
Day," in which participants were encouraged to depict the
Prophet. This May, Pakistan blocked Twitter because the
site still displayed links to a version of the contest
hosted on Facebook. The block lasted for a total of eight
hours, but it inspired immediate outrage among Pakistanis,
including Huma Yusuf, a columnist for the Pakistani
newspaper Dawn, who expressed fear that the block would be
a precursor to Internet censorship surrounding the upcoming
general election. In the end, Twitter held its ground and
did not remove the links, but Facebook, which had been
blocked in previous years, bowed to pressure by the
Pakistani government and restricted content to users in
Pakistan.